An Easton pastor yesterday said black people don't seek to take control of society, but merely want to take their rightful, equal place.

The Rev. Clyde McRae, pastor of the Open Bible Evangelical Church of God in Christ, told a small crowd in his Ferry Street church that the dream of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is alive and seeks to bring about change in all races.

The crowd of blacks and whites that gathered to hear McRae's words on King's birthday heard the flamboyant pastor say that the black community must pull its forces together and "demand our rightful place."

"We want our equal place in society. We want it now," McRae said. "We must fight for it. No one is going to give it to us."

McRae said the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is active in Easton and said the opportunity exists for everyone to join together to make the city a better place to live. "We are on the move. We are on the rise," he said.

McRae also talked about racism, which became a hot topic in recent weeks with the suspension of students at Nazareth High School for passing out racist literature and with the appearance over the weekend of robed Ku Klux Klan members in Bangor and Nazareth.

"Racism is something that's taught," he said. "A baby that's born doesn't know how to hate. Hate is taught."

McRae also renewed a call for more black police officers and teachers in the community and more blacks in positions of authority in local business and industry.

In Allentown ceremonies yesterday, black leaders urged citizens to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by defeating a different kind of enemy -- despair, drugs and crime.

"We find that so many of our people are not free, and not always because of atrocities of mankind against mankind," said the Rev. Albert L. Kaiser, presiding elder of the Philadelphia District of the AME Zion Church. "Some of us have become slaves to drugs, to crime, to vice, and even to Satan."

And that has caused a terrifying number of young blacks to die by violence in the streets, he said. "Without our young people, our young men, there will not even be an African-American race," he said.

In Bethlehem, for the first time in 12 years the Bethlehem branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People did not hold its annual peace march. And for the first time in six years, they did not protest Bethlehem's City Hall being open on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Instead the ceremonies were moved inside Town Hall, and the NAACP looks to negotiate quietly to get the city to make the day an official city holiday.

The city employees contract expires this year and "we are in negotiations with the city" to get the King holiday designated an official holiday, said Esther Lee, the branch's third vice president.

City officials have said that all holidays must be negotiated with city labor unions. However the administration says the city cannot afford to create another holiday and city unions have rejected the holiday exchange they have been offered.

Hopefully a change can be brought about by discussion, said Lee. "Someone will have to bend" and a change can be made without upsetting the city's tax structure, she said.

Earlier in the day organizations including the NAACP and the Elks Bethel Lodge 1284 and place a wreath at the monument at Martin Luther King park on Carlton Ave., Bethlehem. The groups marched from the Elks home on Brodhead Ave.